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Monday, February 2, 2015

Day 33

Copy and paste every week's goals into the top of each daily blog post

Easy and done

Observe b4yougo.net and continue releasing it and following already released channels

Build a login/accounts system into the boilerplate

I have since turned this into the weeklie project itself

Whiteboard discipline

Plot out the first few hours of my day on the whiteboard every night

I must write down the actual TIME I would go and do my run

Do NOT sleep past 10pm

Failed

Think about how to use sites like niice or http://designspiration.net/ to create a Spotify or TV-like service

I want to be able to glance at these pretty things when I'm bored, kinda like having a TV in the background

I want to do this to develop taste, because I don't really use Instagram as much as a lot of other people do

Yesterday's goals:

Build a function that can pull the relevant weekly goals from the DB

Prompt the user that it's time to set a new weekly goal

Maybe add an expiry date to the weekly goals

If I have time, include a weekly evaluation form for the weekly goals

Other features:

Adding tags to the daily tasks or goals

Making a nice report page, or a blog-style output

I will see how far I can get with this.

Evening review.

Throughout the last month or so of development, I often found myself adding a ton of side features as I go along because it seems so easy and accessible since it's right in front of you as you are developing the core features. This is a serious danger because I'd say that at least 50% of my time is wasted on this instead of completing the core features. I need to remind myself that the core features are the MOST important and these side features (easy as they may be), will remain easy to implement later on as well.

As a result, I've developed a much better strategy. And that is to initially develop a spec. In other words, develop a use-case work flow and implement the system that allows it to happen. For example, my spec (that I developed today) in this case was:

Allow user registration and login

Allow email verification

On first view of dashboard, force initial setup

Set weekly goal,

Note the date of weekly evaluation

Allow making entry for today

When user gets to the weekly evaluation date specified by the weekly goal, alert the user:

To do a weekly evaluation

To set goals for next week (because current weekly goals has expired)

This is a much better way of building things because you stick to the core of what you wan to build and are not easily sidetracked. You can also see above that I've crossed out certain aspects that I have already completed.

Unfortunately I fell ill. So progress will have to be slowed significantly. Nevertheless, I am still on track for an alpha release this Wednesday.